Diversity and inclusion are necessary parts of any major and even in every facet of life. Everyone has had a different experience in their life, whether it be due to their culture, circumstances, or personal pursuit. In Computer Science, this need for diversity and inclusion is at an all-time high as institutions are pushing for an evenly spread demographic. In my own experiences, I knew that going into Computer Science had the possibility of being polarized towards a male audience due to the stigmatization and culture around those who take the major. Fortunately, I had quite the pleasant experience throughout my four years, making an ICS friend group that was actually evenly split in both gender and ethnicity. This allowed for a great experience where more differentiating points of views can interact with each other in an intellectually conducive environment. And in a sense, that is the whole goal that RadGrad is pushing towards. My own experiences currently look like an outlier of the experiences of the entire ICS department, but RadGrad hopes to bring engagement in this polarizing major and as a result, make the ICS experience better overall.
RadGrad is much less a nice tool for students to use, but more a call to action to what seems to be this decline in the ICS district in the past couple of decades. By pushing a very approachable system towards underrepresented groups, the project hopes to be able to grab a wider audience of individuals and keep them invested into Computer Science as long as possible. One part of the research papers that I found concerning was the ⅔ loss of female students by the time they reach 400+ level classes. From personal experiences, I can understand the drop as there are major 300+ level walls (specifically 311) that cause stress to the point of dropping. With RadGrad, having access to resources and plans of action to prepare for these walls would be very helpful. I’m not completely sure if this will specifically prevent members of underrepresented groups from dropping ICS, but it is a great step from preventing the umbrella of students as a whole.
One part of ICS that was a concern to me as a freshman was the absolute unknown of all opportunities that I could approach. Like said in the research papers, most students probably look at ICS as a video gaming developer, or a hacker career major. RadGrad tries to circumvent this problem by showing the curated listings of all the local opportunities as well as the multitude of careers that a person can take once they graduate. I think this is very important in keeping retention and engagement because it’s easier to stick to something if you know your end goal. I want to get into Data Networking or Cyber Security and RadGrad shows a defined school path through its recommended classes and opportunities.
Lastly, Radgrad also tries to push for more engagement in extracurriculars outside of classes. Like me, most ICS students want to focus on their classes more than anything as this major is known to be one of the hardest majors to take. It’s hard to add clubs and whatnot with that fact in mind. RadGrad shows students that it is actually a necessity to have these added opportunities alongside the standard amount of classes because it will be hard to succeed in the working field without previous experience. With RadGrad’s ICE leveling system, students are able to understand what they should do in order to have a good chance at landing jobs right out of graduation. Most people think that you just need one internship or a college job relating to the major, but the system pushes for more, which incentivizes students to take extracurricular activities that will help them achieve their goals.
It goes without saying that RadGrad isn’t perfect in its current iteration. There is much more that can be done in terms of UI design. As we’ve talked about in detail within our meeting, having a clean, fully functional system is a must have to keep people engaged. The drag and drop function of the degree planner isn’t visually noticeable so having indicators like the 6 dot indicator will help out immensely. Also defaulting the careers and opportunities to the recommended filter could help out push the want for students to go down their preferred career path. The filter radio buttons need to pop out more as well, whether it be bolder text or an outlined segment to put the items in. These are some of the suggestions I can think of, but as the summer goes on, I’m sure more plans and ideas can be formulated to make RadGrad better.
Making up a design for the pilot study is kind of vague to think about. Personally, I think that the style that we’ve used for InternAloha’s pilot studies worked very well. Using Google Forms, we can formulate questions surrounding each major component that RadGrad offers, mainly the intertwining four tabs of interests, careers, courses, and opportunities. Since the planner is the most complex function and something of note, we would make questions about its design and functionality. And lastly we would ask about the ICE leveling system and whether users like the concept as a whole. More should go into the pilot study but having that way of having the user screenshare their experience while we can ask questions and take notes would most likely be the best bet to go for.
Overall, by making a system that can appeal to underrepresented groups of people and allowing for exposure to all possible opportunities in ICS, RadGrad can allow for a more successful career path with an evenly diverse demographic. This system is a great step towards these goals, but it won’t happen with just this. Society already built this stereotype of programmers and that needs to change, through the representation of those taking this major on social media, direct exposure to highschool students before they go to college, and other steps. Let’s hope that RadGrad is the defining first step.